BitShares Forum

Main => General Discussion => Topic started by: Troglodactyl on July 17, 2015, 04:17:49 am

Title: Community Transition - The Future of BitShares
Post by: Troglodactyl on July 17, 2015, 04:17:49 am
In its infancy, this network and the community surrounding it has been highly dependent on a few key actors for leadership, growth, and survival.  This is normal and healthy for a developing network, but it would be terribly unhealthy to stagnate in this stage.  I am quite grateful for the dedication, innovation, and vision that has been poured into BitShares by its founders and other early leaders.  I hope they will remain active members and contributors to this community, but with the impending transition to graphene, the time has come to mature our social structure into a more fault tolerant mesh that reflects the elegant design of our network.

To achieve this, I propose the following prioritization strategy:

1. Complete BitShares 2.0 migration
2. Create user friendly Follow My Vote tools to enable stake voting on later proposals
?. Privacy features
?. Bond market
?. Decentralized BitShares ID based communication and social platform to replace centralized forums
?...

As soon as step one is complete, the community can commence a massively parallel marketing campaign using the referral system.  As soon as step two is complete, all remaining development goals can be proposed and sequenced through stakeholder voting.  Developers ideally should maintain multiple links to the community for fault tolerance, rather than relying so much on bytemaster to speak for them.  We need to outgrow dependence on any single individual as a decision making bottleneck.  In the future, good ideas should propagate through our social mesh virally, snowballing stake support as they go.  Where they originate is irrelevant.

This is the last major strategy and vision decision that needs to be pushed through with the current leadership structure.  This will enable them to work themselves out of a job and become just a few more highly respected community members and stakeholders.  With BitShares 2.0 + an FMV stake voting system, I believe this network can begin to grow even beyond the intentions of its founders.

Please state if you agree that using 2.0 and FMV to end BitShares remaining reliance on centralized leadership should be our top priority.  If you disagree, please state your reasoning.  The goal is in sight, but we need all need to be together on this, especially the dev team.
Title: Re: Community Transition - The Future of BitShares
Post by: bytemaster on July 17, 2015, 04:39:20 am
+1
Title: Re: Community Transition - The Future of BitShares
Post by: Ander on July 17, 2015, 05:42:04 am
In its infancy, this network and the community surrounding it has been highly dependent on a few key actors for leadership, growth, and survival.  This is normal and healthy for a developing network, but it would be terribly unhealthy to stagnate in this stage.  I am quite grateful for the dedication, innovation, and vision that has been poured into BitShares by its founders and other early leaders.  I hope they will remain active members and contributors to this community, but with the impending transition to graphene, the time has come to mature our social structure into a more fault tolerant mesh that reflects the elegant design of our network.

To achieve this, I propose the following prioritization strategy:

1. Complete BitShares 2.0 migration
2. Create user friendly Follow My Vote tools to enable stake voting on later proposals
?. Privacy features
?. Bond market
?. Decentralized BitShares ID based communication and social platform to replace centralized forums
?...

As soon as step one is complete, the community can commence a massively parallel marketing campaign using the referral system.  As soon as step two is complete, all remaining development goals can be proposed and sequenced through stakeholder voting.  Developers ideally should maintain multiple links to the community for fault tolerance, rather than relying so much on bytemaster to speak for them.  We need to outgrow dependence on any single individual as a decision making bottleneck.  In the future, good ideas should propagate through our social mesh virally, snowballing stake support as they go.  Where they originate is irrelevant.

This is the last major strategy and vision decision that needs to be pushed through with the current leadership structure.  This will enable them to work themselves out of a job and become just a few more highly respected community members and stakeholders.  With BitShares 2.0 + an FMV stake voting system, I believe this network can begin to grow even beyond the intentions of its founders.

Please state if you agree that using 2.0 and FMV to end BitShares remaining reliance on centralized leadership should be our top priority.  If you disagree, please state your reasoning.  The goal is in sight, but we need all need to be together on this, especially the dev team.

I completely agree.  We need to evolve beyond the point where we are dependent on any entity. 

Once we have a great product out, there will be many initiatives to promote and improve it,of which the current dev team's will be a part.  But we will have grown beyond relying on any one group.

Title: Re: Community Transition - The Future of BitShares
Post by: bitmeat on July 17, 2015, 05:47:47 am
I completely agree.  We need to evolve beyond the point where we are dependent on any entity. 

You mean like Cryptonomex? :) Couldn't resist...
Title: Re: Community Transition - The Future of BitShares
Post by: xeroc on July 17, 2015, 06:58:58 am
I completely agree.  We need to evolve beyond the point where we are dependent on any entity. 

You mean like Cryptonomex? :) Couldn't resist...
Eventually CNX has nothing to do with BitShares in particular .. once we have 2) of the OP, the development may become decentralized too because stakeholders can vote for their hard forks... not necessarily only proposed by CNX but others ..
Title: Re: Community Transition - The Future of BitShares
Post by: Ander on July 17, 2015, 07:02:37 am
I completely agree.  We need to evolve beyond the point where we are dependent on any entity. 

You mean like Cryptonomex? :) Couldn't resist...

Exactly what I mean.  Right now we depend on them to give us 2.0.  Everything waits on that.

In the future we need to grow beyond this and more decentralized.
Title: Re: Community Transition - The Future of BitShares
Post by: bitmeat on July 17, 2015, 07:13:42 am
I completely agree.  We need to evolve beyond the point where we are dependent on any entity. 

You mean like Cryptonomex? :) Couldn't resist...

Exactly what I mean.  Right now we depend on them to give us 2.0.  Everything waits on that.

In the future we need to grow beyond this and more decentralized.

But the future is now. If someone comes up with better BitShares you don't think the community would follow them? :)
Title: Re: Community Transition - The Future of BitShares
Post by: xeroc on July 17, 2015, 07:21:24 am
But the future is now. If someone comes up with better BitShares you don't think the community would follow them? :)
It's not the implementation "BitShares" that holds me here, it's the inspiration and the goals of the project: financial freedom, free markets, free speech, non-violent interaction
Title: Re: Community Transition - The Future of BitShares
Post by: fuzzy on July 17, 2015, 07:51:53 am
Social network with Privacy would very easily integrate with FollowMyVote and the tools needed. 

I'd also like to see tools for gaining referrals via advertising on popular social networks (for anyone in the community to use)
and
Tools like trading bots to create liquidity. 

We could put up working proposals to give everyone in the community the ability to gain referrals from their own social network footprints...and it is an investment in ourselves.

I would gladly let people use the hangouts content (or snippets thereof) and post their own personal referral code along with it. 
Title: Re: Community Transition - The Future of BitShares
Post by: santaclause102 on July 17, 2015, 08:19:11 am
In its infancy, this network and the community surrounding it has been highly dependent on a few key actors for leadership, growth, and survival.  This is normal and healthy for a developing network, but it would be terribly unhealthy to stagnate in this stage.  I am quite grateful for the dedication, innovation, and vision that has been poured into BitShares by its founders and other early leaders.  I hope they will remain active members and contributors to this community, but with the impending transition to graphene, the time has come to mature our social structure into a more fault tolerant mesh that reflects the elegant design of our network.

To achieve this, I propose the following prioritization strategy:

1. Complete BitShares 2.0 migration
2. Create user friendly Follow My Vote tools to enable stake voting on later proposals
?. Privacy features
?. Bond market
?. Decentralized BitShares ID based communication and social platform to replace centralized forums
?...

As soon as step one is complete, the community can commence a massively parallel marketing campaign using the referral system.  As soon as step two is complete, all remaining development goals can be proposed and sequenced through stakeholder voting.  Developers ideally should maintain multiple links to the community for fault tolerance, rather than relying so much on bytemaster to speak for them.  We need to outgrow dependence on any single individual as a decision making bottleneck.  In the future, good ideas should propagate through our social mesh virally, snowballing stake support as they go.  Where they originate is irrelevant.

This is the last major strategy and vision decision that needs to be pushed through with the current leadership structure.  This will enable them to work themselves out of a job and become just a few more highly respected community members and stakeholders.  With BitShares 2.0 + an FMV stake voting system, I believe this network can begin to grow even beyond the intentions of its founders.

Please state if you agree that using 2.0 and FMV to end BitShares remaining reliance on centralized leadership should be our top priority.  If you disagree, please state your reasoning.  The goal is in sight, but we need all need to be together on this, especially the dev team.
What other than worker proposals which are anyway part of 2.0 would "Follow My Vote tools" allow to vote for?
Title: Re: Community Transition - The Future of BitShares
Post by: xeroc on July 17, 2015, 08:40:38 am
What other than worker proposals which are anyway part of 2.0 would "Follow My Vote tools" allow to vote for?
I think he is talking about the possibilities to vote on-chain in general. Those would also include, witnesses, delegates, and most (when not all) fees of the system ..
Title: Re: Community Transition - The Future of BitShares
Post by: eagleeye on July 17, 2015, 08:47:56 am
 +5%
Title: Re: Community Transition - The Future of BitShares
Post by: santaclause102 on July 17, 2015, 08:48:16 am
What other than worker proposals which are anyway part of 2.0 would "Follow My Vote tools" allow to vote for?
I think he is talking about the possibilities to vote on-chain in general. Those would also include, witnesses, delegates, and most (when not all) fees of the system ..
^
That is all part of 2.0. I couldnt come up with something BTS stakeholders could vote on other than what you mentioned.
Title: Re: Community Transition - The Future of BitShares
Post by: xeroc on July 17, 2015, 09:01:50 am
That is all part of 2.0. I couldnt come up with something BTS stakeholders could vote on other than what you mentioned.
Even though we can not come up with something like this NOW does not necessarily mean your future us can not :)
From what I understand from the code of Graphene, the code can be easily extended to allow for many more "voting" possibilities.

I don't yet know much about FMV, but I can imagine extra tokens that can vote for proposals that are independent of the BitShares Ecosytem.
Title: Re: Community Transition - The Future of BitShares
Post by: arhag on July 17, 2015, 10:20:53 am
That is all part of 2.0. I couldnt come up with something BTS stakeholders could vote on other than what you mentioned.
Even though we can not come up with something like this NOW does not necessarily mean your future us can not :)
From what I understand from the code of Graphene, the code can be easily extended to allow for many more "voting" possibilities.

I don't yet know much about FMV, but I can imagine extra tokens that can vote for proposals that are independent of the BitShares Ecosytem.

The way I see it, BitShares 2.0 stake-based voting and Follow My Vote voting are two different ways of voting. The first is not private and weighs votes by the quantity of the asset (at first just BTS but in theory any asset) that is authorized for the particular election. The second is a "1 final vote/ballot per unique token" system where unique tokens are publicly assigned on the blockchain by the election authority prior to the election opening (typically with 1 token assigned per every unique person qualified for the particular election) and it uses advanced cryptography to provide privacy for the voters (disassociates the entities who were assigned the unique voting tokens in the public pre-election phase from the actual ballots submitted by each token after the election opens).

The first kind of voting is much easier and better suited for stake-based voting on proposals (despite the fact that it doesn't give us true privacy but rather just pseudo-anonymity assuming our account's aren't tied to our real identities). That is good enough for the type of decentralized governance Troglodactyl is talking about. So I would say after the transition to BitShares 2.0 is complete, we don't need to wait for an extra step 2 for Follow My Vote style voting features. We can and should immediately get started with voting on worker proposals for important new features to add to BitShares 2.0 such as (in no particular order): bond markets; option markets; privacy features (confidential transactions aka blinded amounts, stealth transfers with blinded signatures of the type that provide private multisig, transaction types designed to easily facilitate CoinJoin-like functionality, etc.); Follow My Vote style voting features; escrow transactions and basic payment channels; a full micropayment network à la Bitcoin's lightning network; LS-LMSR prediction markets; Augur-like decentralized oracles; and more.
Title: Re: Community Transition - The Future of BitShares
Post by: cylonmaker2053 on July 17, 2015, 01:43:37 pm
But the future is now. If someone comes up with better BitShares you don't think the community would follow them? :)
It's not the implementation "BitShares" that holds me here, it's the inspiration and the goals of the project: financial freedom, free markets, free speech, non-violent interaction

 +5% +5% +5% stimmt
Title: Re: Community Transition - The Future of BitShares
Post by: Stan on July 17, 2015, 01:57:29 pm
I completely agree.  We need to evolve beyond the point where we are dependent on any entity. 

You mean like Cryptonomex? :) Couldn't resist...

Exactly what I mean.  Right now we depend on them to give us 2.0.  Everything waits on that.

In the future we need to grow beyond this and more decentralized.

Everything we have done is to open the doors for exactly that to happen:

1.  Ways to get independently hired by the blockchain
2.  Ways to get credit for every new user you sign up - using any new business model you can think of.
3.  Creating an open BitShares Exchange Network that new businesses are plugging in to.
4.  Encouraging core devs to become free agents - when they no longer need our support.
5.  Encouraging other developers to build their assets on top of BitShares.
6.  Encourage other complementary chains to help fund and grow acceptance of the technology (Muse, PLAY, etc.)

So decentralization is baked in at every level.
The only thing we are waiting on is for entrepreneurial talent to recognize the opportunities and act on them.
And you already see that with new worker proposals and network partners announcing their plans every week.


Title: Re: Community Transition - The Future of BitShares
Post by: hadrian on July 19, 2015, 10:24:18 pm
That is all part of 2.0. I couldnt come up with something BTS stakeholders could vote on other than what you mentioned.
Even though we can not come up with something like this NOW does not necessarily mean your future us can not :)
From what I understand from the code of Graphene, the code can be easily extended to allow for many more "voting" possibilities.

I don't yet know much about FMV, but I can imagine extra tokens that can vote for proposals that are independent of the BitShares Ecosytem.

The way I see it, BitShares 2.0 stake-based voting and Follow My Vote voting are two different ways of voting. The first is not private and weighs votes by the quantity of the asset (at first just BTS but in theory any asset) that is authorized for the particular election. The second is a "1 final vote/ballot per unique token" system where unique tokens are publicly assigned on the blockchain by the election authority prior to the election opening (typically with 1 token assigned per every unique person qualified for the particular election) and it uses advanced cryptography to provide privacy for the voters (disassociates the entities who were assigned the unique voting tokens in the public pre-election phase from the actual ballots submitted by each token after the election opens).

The first kind of voting is much easier and better suited for stake-based voting on proposals (despite the fact that it doesn't give us true privacy but rather just pseudo-anonymity assuming our account's aren't tied to our real identities). That is good enough for the type of decentralized governance Troglodactyl is talking about. So I would say after the transition to BitShares 2.0 is complete, we don't need to wait for an extra step 2 for Follow My Vote style voting features. We can and should immediately get started with voting on worker proposals for important new features to add to BitShares 2.0 such as (in no particular order): bond markets; option markets; privacy features (confidential transactions aka blinded amounts, stealth transfers with blinded signatures of the type that provide private multisig, transaction types designed to easily facilitate CoinJoin-like functionality, etc.); Follow My Vote style voting features; escrow transactions and basic payment channels; a full micropayment network à la Bitcoin's lightning network; LS-LMSR prediction markets; Augur-like decentralized oracles; and more.

You mention LS-LMSR prediction markets / Augur-like decentralized oracles...

I wonder if this sort of thing could/should be utilised by Bitshares to aid decision making when it comes to voting on important issues. People often make poor decisions, and I'd hate to see voting done with a 'herd mentality', leading to decisions which are sub-optimal or harmful for BitShares. Knowing a little about Liquidity-Sensitive Logarithmic Market Scoring Rule prediction markets (http://www.augur.net/blog/what-is-an-automated-market-maker), it seems this could help people to vote beneficially. When 2.0 comes, should we set a high priority on getting such a thing implemented within BitShares so that we can use it as a tool to make BitShares even better?

I believe some huge companies make decisions by allowing employees to bet using prediction makets. I did a quick Google and found this article (http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/stories/2006-08-02/workers-place-your-bets).

I'm not talking only about creating a prediction market...

I'm talking of using it specifically in order to optimise the development of BitShares itself!

Has this been discussed at any length in the forum? I'm tempted to start a new topic if not...
Title: Re: Community Transition - The Future of BitShares
Post by: Permie on July 19, 2015, 11:37:38 pm
That is all part of 2.0. I couldnt come up with something BTS stakeholders could vote on other than what you mentioned.
Even though we can not come up with something like this NOW does not necessarily mean your future us can not :)
From what I understand from the code of Graphene, the code can be easily extended to allow for many more "voting" possibilities.

I don't yet know much about FMV, but I can imagine extra tokens that can vote for proposals that are independent of the BitShares Ecosytem.

The way I see it, BitShares 2.0 stake-based voting and Follow My Vote voting are two different ways of voting. The first is not private and weighs votes by the quantity of the asset (at first just BTS but in theory any asset) that is authorized for the particular election. The second is a "1 final vote/ballot per unique token" system where unique tokens are publicly assigned on the blockchain by the election authority prior to the election opening (typically with 1 token assigned per every unique person qualified for the particular election) and it uses advanced cryptography to provide privacy for the voters (disassociates the entities who were assigned the unique voting tokens in the public pre-election phase from the actual ballots submitted by each token after the election opens).

The first kind of voting is much easier and better suited for stake-based voting on proposals (despite the fact that it doesn't give us true privacy but rather just pseudo-anonymity assuming our account's aren't tied to our real identities). That is good enough for the type of decentralized governance Troglodactyl is talking about. So I would say after the transition to BitShares 2.0 is complete, we don't need to wait for an extra step 2 for Follow My Vote style voting features. We can and should immediately get started with voting on worker proposals for important new features to add to BitShares 2.0 such as (in no particular order): bond markets; option markets; privacy features (confidential transactions aka blinded amounts, stealth transfers with blinded signatures of the type that provide private multisig, transaction types designed to easily facilitate CoinJoin-like functionality, etc.); Follow My Vote style voting features; escrow transactions and basic payment channels; a full micropayment network à la Bitcoin's lightning network; LS-LMSR prediction markets; Augur-like decentralized oracles; and more.

You mention LS-LMSR prediction markets / Augur-like decentralized oracles...

I wonder if this sort of thing could/should be utilised by Bitshares to aid decision making when it comes to voting on important issues. People often make poor decisions, and I'd hate to see voting done with a 'herd mentality', leading to decisions which are sub-optimal or harmful for BitShares. Knowing a little about Liquidity-Sensitive Logarithmic Market Scoring Rule prediction markets (http://www.augur.net/blog/what-is-an-automated-market-maker), it seems this could help people to vote beneficially. When 2.0 comes, should we set a high priority on getting such a thing implemented within BitShares so that we can use it as a tool to make BitShares even better?

I believe some huge companies make decisions by allowing employees to bet using prediction makets. I did a quick Google and found this article (http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/stories/2006-08-02/workers-place-your-bets).

I'm not talking only about creating a prediction market...

I'm talking of using it specifically in order to optimise the development of BitShares itself!

Has this been discussed at any length in the forum? I'm tempted to start a new topic if not...
+5%
Title: Re: Community Transition - The Future of BitShares
Post by: Troglodactyl on July 22, 2015, 12:46:49 pm
What other than worker proposals which are anyway part of 2.0 would "Follow My Vote tools" allow to vote for?
I think he is talking about the possibilities to vote on-chain in general. Those would also include, witnesses, delegates, and most (when not all) fees of the system ..
^
That is all part of 2.0. I couldnt come up with something BTS stakeholders could vote on other than what you mentioned.

The built in 2.0 voting is all directly chain actionable, but it would be helpful to have easy ways to determine shareholder opinion on more general things also.  It's awkward to use witness or delegate voting to generate consensus on a big picture strategy or vision for the network upon which actionable vote proposals will be based.  Follow My Vote should provide light weight, verifiable shareholder polling and voting to help solve those problems.
Title: Re: Community Transition - The Future of BitShares
Post by: ak on July 22, 2015, 10:39:23 pm
What other than worker proposals which are anyway part of 2.0 would "Follow My Vote tools" allow to vote for?
I think he is talking about the possibilities to vote on-chain in general. Those would also include, witnesses, delegates, and most (when not all) fees of the system ..
^
That is all part of 2.0. I couldnt come up with something BTS stakeholders could vote on other than what you mentioned.

The built in 2.0 voting is all directly chain actionable, but it would be helpful to have easy ways to determine shareholder opinion on more general things also.  It's awkward to use witness or delegate voting to generate consensus on a big picture strategy or vision for the network upon which actionable vote proposals will be based.  Follow My Vote should provide light weight, verifiable shareholder polling and voting to help solve those problems.

 +5%

We are working on it!!
Title: Re: Community Transition - The Future of BitShares
Post by: xeroc on July 23, 2015, 08:03:30 am
We are working on it!!
Thought so.
Is the "tech" confidential or could you elaborate on how this will be achieved?